Nebraska football fans of a certain age remember Matt Davison’s remarkable catch on the final play of regulation to force overtime in the Huskers’ 45-38 victory at Missouri in 1997.
But why begin with that when the subject is the 1998 game against the Tigers?
Missouri had the opportunity to duplicate such a finish before 76,425 at Memorial Stadium in late October of 1998. After recovering a Monte Christo fumble at the Nebraska 46-yard line, trailing 20-13 with 1:46 remaining, the Tigers moved to the 22-yard line with time running out.
On what would be the game’s final play, Husker linebacker Eric Johnson sacked Missouri quarterback Corby Jones, looking for a tying touchdown in the end zone, for a 10-yard loss.
Seventh-ranked Nebraska escaped with a victory against the 19th-ranked Tigers.
And yes, Christo, a walk-on, was the Husker quarterback who directed the victory, scoring two second-half touchdowns after a 13-6 halftime deficit. Kris Brown kicked two first-half field goals, the second from 30 yards as time elapsed for Nebraska’s other points.
Christo replaced starter Bobby Newcombe, who was dealing with a posterior cruciate ligament injury, for the final two series of the first half and played the remainder of the game. Freshman back-up Eric Crouch was still sidelined by a hip-pointer problem.
Christo finished with 67 yards and the touchdowns on 20 carries and was 1-for-5 passing for 7 yards. His first-quarter fumble was returned by defensive tackle Steve Erickson 41 yards for Missouri’s first touchdown. Jones scored the second, set up by a 44-yard return of a blocked field goal attempt.
Without the mistakes, the Tigers might not have scored. Nebraska’s defense limited them to 166 total yards, including 77 rushing on 37 attempts. Devin West, who went into the game as the nation’s second-best rusher averaging nearly 200 yards, accounted for 72 of the yards on 24 carries.
Sophomore Correll Buckhalter, with DeAngelo Evans sidelined by a tailbone injury, led the Huskers with 125 yards on 25 carries. “’Buck’ is an up-the-field type of runner,” Coach Frank Solich said. “I think ‘Buck’, it looked like to me from the sideline, was getting the most out of the plays he had.”
Buckhalter “ran strong, ran tough,” said Solich. “It was the kind of game where if you don’t have that kind of running back in there going for you, then you’ve got problems.”
Nebraska needed someone who could “pick up 2,3 yards after contract,” Solich said.
Linebacker Jay Foreman led the Husker defense with 13 tackles and a sack. In addition to Johnson’s potentially overtime-saving sack, linebacker Brian Shaw sacked Jones.
Rover Mike Brown had nine tackles and defensive tackle Loran Kaiser recovered a fumble.
The concern wasn’t defense, though, it was offense. “I think offensively we understood that we needed to pick it up on our side to make this thing work,” said Solich.
A major point of discussion post-game was who should be starting at quarterback when the Huskers would play Texas at Memorial Stadium.
“We’ll just have to see how Bobby feels,” said quarterbacks coach Turner Gill. “We have three good (quarterbacks). I don’t think there should be a controversy.”
“I’m not going to think about next week quite yet in terms of the quarterback position, or any other position,” Solich said. “We’ll look at film. We’ll see how practices go early in the week. We’ll make determinations on the quarterback position, and certainly other positions.”
There would be talk among the fans, of course, debate about who should be the starter if all three could play. They’re “great,” Gill said of the fans, “But they’re not the ones who make decisions.”
